SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to What Would Amber Do with your host, Amber Howard, your weekly dose of guidance, inspiration, and strategies to have your small business and whole life thrive. We bring you incredible guests who share their real life experiences of being an entrepreneur so you can have your whole life work. Now, here's your host, Amber Howard.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to What Would Amber Do? It is my pleasure this morning to be speaking with John Galbraith. John is the senior director of venture growth and corporate innovation at Tech Alliance. John is a connector, storyteller, and entrepreneur. John exists to create options for entrepreneurs to thrive. And his commitment is to influence the government to increase support for all those who choose the entrepreneurial journey. John, just thank you so much for being here with us to this morning and giving me your time. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I always love connecting with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

It's a pleasure to be here, Amber, and thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, so good. And you're you're an interesting case, right? So I met you through, I don't even know how I met you. Someone connected me to Tech Alliance. I think it was Merrill, but you were an entrepreneur, and now you've kind of gone back to working a nine to five job or whatever that looks like these days in a pandemic. Um, but talk to me a little bit about that journey. How did you become an entrepreneur in the first place? And then what, you know, what was the catalyst for you choosing to kind of step away from being an entrepreneur to move into a space where you you cause and support other entrepreneurs?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Sure. Yeah, this is uh um, you know, I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, rural Ontario farming community. So everyone I knew um growing up was an entrepreneur, my father, my uncles, my grandparents, um, to the point where we got to participate in that entrepreneurship as young kids and and and going to the grain elevator and and getting our own jobs there and starting to earn our own money. So it was something I came by, honestly. But I was also a pretty bad kid in high school, um, you know, getting asked to leave, uh, you know, being, you know, uh suspended and whatnot during school. And so I took some time off in grade 11 and I went to live with my sister um in Toronto and just trying to, you know, on my parents' maybe uh advice, if I couldn't figure out what I wanted to be, maybe kind of look at some other things. So just maybe I could start on a list of things I don't want to be. And that was really kind of that paradigm shift of looking at how to go at life, like through the eyes of my parents, and discussing that with my parents was kind of like, huh, wow, like that's a different way to solve a problem. If we don't know what I want to be, then let's look at things. So I did my chef's apprenticeship um in Toronto at a Caribbean bar, and I realized that I'd better go back to school and finish high school because I don't want to work in a kitchen forever. Uh, so that was really the catalyst to get out. But um uh in 2000, the year was 2000, and I wanted to go to college for something. Um and in my research, I had found two programs. One was like eco-adventure tourism, so I was a big hippie, and uh, you know, just wanted to be a professional camper. I thought that would be a cool lifestyle. But um, Lethbridge, Alberta, the Lethbridge Community College in the year 2000 was the only technical two-year college in Canada that offered an entrepreneurship program. Um, and I was accepted, and I was really excited about that, and it felt exclusive. It felt because it was the only entrepreneurship program being offered in college, it felt really exclusive. And I didn't understand the importance of that feeling at the time. Um, but I studied entrepreneurship at school after that. Um, I was an income tax consultant, so I got to look at the numbers for like 1,200 small farming businesses across Ontario. So I got to be a student of business outside of college. Um, and then I was really hooked. Um, it was just about, you know, folks that were just figuring it out. Uh, folks that had maybe inherited a business, maybe had started their own business, maybe had seen an opportunity, and they were just figuring it out. So that was really kind of what sparked it. Um yeah, in terms of, you know, that's when I started working with companies who wanted to exit. Um, specifically, there was a company, uh, School Voyageurs. Um, we sold school trips, and it was probably the most culturally speaking, like I feel like I'm still searching for that in my career. Like it was just everyone was locked arms, the leadership was leading from behind. The, you know, we knew everything went out the door was, you know, gonna be a hundred percent top quality. It was just the best place to work. Everyone was happy, it didn't feel like work. Um, and that business, the whole point, you know, we were working there to grow it and sell it. So the business was sold, and eventually that experience went away. Um, I worked in baseball for a long time. Um, that was with a company that was started in my hometown from some guys. Um, I was part of the initial baseball development team. We developed baseball software to score baseball games, and we were really good at selling it, and we effectively uh sold a lot. Um, sold every league that wasn't major league baseball had used our software. And I'll tell you, this is actually kind of my story, and this is where it all really starts is like kind of how I came back to the public sector to kind of help entrepreneurship at large. But it was we were working um selling baseball software, and again, we sold essentially every university league that wasn't Major League Baseball, so kind of all the feeder leagues, and eventually Major League Baseball knocked on our door and said, Hey, we think you guys might have solved our solved our scouting problem. Um, so we actually worked with Major League Baseball to help them implement their first cloud-based scouting system. Um and the reason I tell you that is because after that experience with Point Streak is when I started tech companies. Um, and it's when I try, I took some attempts at different tech startups, I should say. And in my mind, there was only one path to high-tech entrepreneurship, even though I had studied entrepreneurship in the year 2000, before even Facebook, and before it was very like paper business plans and service businesses, and you know, it was kind of pro forma business, right? And entrepreneurship. But going forward, and and this idea had happened, Silicon Valley had kind of established, and now this idea of entrepreneurship in my mind in in high-tech and in innovation was there was only one path. It was that you needed to rate, get $100,000, you needed to hire a developer. Um, and and and that's how you needed to get to market. So you already had this tremendous amount of risk because you had to go find that $100,000 to get it. And then after that, you had to, you know, get somebody to give you like a million dollars, and then you had to employ all these people. And then in a few years, you had to turn that million dollars into $10 million and then you know, sell the business. And that was it was a really scary, uh scary time. But we we started going down this road because we we we thought we could solve problems and whatnot. So um I had done that for a few years with moderate success here and there. Uh started about two or three different tech companies and took them to market. Um and then I saw this job posting for you know my title as senior director of venture growth and corporate innovation. I never introduced myself with my title, but I saw this opportunity to work with the regional innovation center um in London. And I was disgruntled as somebody who had been in the ecosystem, an entrepreneur had been trying to start businesses in the ecosystem. And this regional innovation center. So, for those who don't know, the regional innovation centers are like Communitech and Mars Discovery District, and so Tech Alliance is one of 17 regional innovation centers around our province. Um, and as an entrepreneur, it felt very clinical to work with your regional innovation center. It was long-form surveys and it was data collection, and it was um, you know, working with folks that maybe were new graduates out of university that maybe couldn't appreciate my journey as an entrepreneur. So I applied for the job because I wanted to kind of tell the people this. I wanted to tell, like, I wanted to tell them how it was hard to be an entrepreneur. And so I lobbed my resume in, and sure enough, I got uh an interview and I was able to tell them, like, hey, you know, as an entrepreneur, I think you we can do a lot better as an ecosystem to support these people. I think that entrepreneur is entrepreneurship as a career, um, high-tech entrepreneurship, innovative entrepreneurship as a career isn't accessible, it's not accessible at all. Um, I uh going back, there was only one college. It was exclusive to be an entrepreneur in the year 2000, and that was only 20 years ago. Um, so I got kind of this put your money where your mouth is offer. And um and and here I am, and and I exist uh as you as you mentioned to make entrepreneurship um more accessible. I exist to kind of dispel this idea that there's only one path, and it's the Silicon Valley path to success in entrepreneurship. Um, you know, as a person who suffered from anxiety a lot uh through my entrepreneurial career, I know that that's not an easy path to go. There's a lot of stress that comes with it. So um that hopefully answers your question to kind of you know where it all started for me, and then this idea like, why am I back, you know, being an entrepreneur at a not-for-profit uh organization. So I hope that kind of paints a better picture for you, Amber.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

And it does, and it brings up so much. Like, I didn't, I and I I assert that most entrepreneurs don't even know that the regional innovative centers exist. I didn't know about Tech Alliance until someone told, you know, and it kind of points out, I think one of the the challenges with this like life choice or career choice or whatever you want to call being an entrepreneur, is like there's so much, there's so little guidance, there's so little um support, as you I think you just so greatly illustrated, John, like to even know where to start. And and and and I think there's this inherent, okay, and I'm just like getting this now. When you step into the space, all of a sudden, you know, like in the world of manifestation, you start manifesting all of these things pop up on your Facebook walls about courses and like people are in your in these groups because you know you should join groups to try and find other people. And and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I just grew my business to 17 million. You want my free set, and you and it's like there's this like cynicism. It's like, oh, everyone just wants my email. Like, that's what I'm being taught to do. And what it looks like to be a successful entrepreneur is to get people on your, you know, your email list so you can generate leads. And and it's so clinical, and it's so, and and I think it breeds this inherent mistrust because all of the people that you could potentially be partnering with, you know, all of a sudden become competitors. And and so all of a sudden we're no longer in this space of creativity and collaboration and partnering and supporting one another. We are really reinforcing this idea of the solo, you know, entrepreneur that you have to go it alone. This, like, what a, you know, this like um cookie-cutter template of what a successful entrepreneur looks like and those people who made it. Um I just I think it does us a disservice. And the other thing I really got out of what you were just saying is there are there are so many different ways to fulfill upon our commitments in life. And it doesn't um it doesn't have to look a specific way. And I think you're making a massive difference for people and are gonna continue to do that. And and sounds like you sleep a little bit better at night.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah, well, it's funny. That's funny that you put it that way, sleep a little bit better because when you know, it always takes a team to start a tech company. You get it's really difficult to do it on your own. You're either a uh sales kind of you know, strong person that's non-technical, or you're kind of that technical person that has a hard time. So it usually always takes about two people. And when, you know, at the second startup, um, you know, we kind of before we all entered into it, it was more eyes wide open that we in fact knew that we were doing a startup, first of all, uh, it didn't kind of just happen upon uh out of some conversations, but we said, you know, why, why, why are you doing this? And you know, maybe I kind of acknowledge that um, you know, I'm just not a capitalist generally, it's not like it's always not for money. So it would, you know, we'd go around the circle, and my answer of why are we gonna start this business would always be that I just want something that gets me out of bed in the morning without an alarm clock. So this idea that, you know, I want to be so excited about something and wake up with it. And, you know, admittedly, maybe entrepreneurship wasn't the the the case, you know. I told you earlier back in 2007, 2008, I worked with a company that got me out of bed without an alarm clock. And we were, you know, it was the culture, it wasn't necessarily the thing that we were doing, it was how we were doing it and the way we respected and felt about it as an organization and and did it together. Right. So, um, but yeah, this idea of like not doing it for money first is something that I've always kind of struggled with of, you know, even as a coach and an advisor now, um, like businesses have to make money, right? Like you have to make money. And one of the things, like I think that entrepreneurs, you know, and maybe maybe thinking about it wrong is that money doesn't have to be the first thing. The first thing should be solving a problem. That's what entrepreneurship is. The first thing you should do is solve a problem. So you have an idea, you have an innovative way, you should be able to make things better, faster, or cheaper for somebody else, right? You solve the problem. And then after you can do that a few times, we can figure out how to put a business model around it. So money should never be the first motivator, in my opinion. From my lived experience, it's never worked when money's been the first motivator. It should be really focused on that. Um, you know, let's just solve the one problem and figure out how to do that really well, and then we can figure out if it's monetizable and if it's then scalable to a point where we feel comfortable and applying the next X amount of our life effort to that project. If that makes sense for you.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, it does. And um it's interesting, right? Because like I think about all of these, like, you know, consulting, coaching. It's almost like we've lumped in a bunch of stuff into, you know, like what being an entrepreneur is, when and when perhaps, and I even put myself in this own category here. Like I do consulting and coaching and training and development, you know, maybe like in the traditional sense of what an entrepreneur is. I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm more a business owner, right? And maybe there is a useful distinction to be made there, right? Because um, and I'm just this, uh I'm I don't I don't know that I'm like dancing here in this conversation. That's just what's there. It's like um, you know, one of the things that I've really been engaged with lately, uh, John, I started this course called Wisdom Unlimited. It's like an 11-month journey into how do you bring fun, play, and ease to every area of your life? Like, I don't know if you've noticed, but human beings tend to be a bit significant, like we bring a lot of significance to everything. And um and one of the things is like, how can we say something new? What could we say newly about a thing, whether it's relationships between women and men, diversity and inclusion, being an entrepreneur, but like actually, because if if you look, and then what I've noticed is we often are saying the same things over and over again, right? And so, how could we say, what could we say newly about being an entrepreneur? Right? What could we say newly that would actually make a difference in in how people experience this journey? Um, which I think we like to to romanticize it a little bit, but it it can be pretty brutal and really lonely. If we're honest about it, it can be really brutal and really alone. And um I think you know, maybe there's even a personality type that like would take that risk and lends themselves to be an entrepreneur that I think maybe even um makes not want to say makes it worse, but like amplifies the problem because it tends to be people that might be like not as not as comfortable asking for help and support, you know, feeling like they've got to go out alone or be strong or you know, so um yeah, I just said a lot, but it's it's a talk about kind of one of the personal reasons why I'm back at a, you know, as I air quote doing a nine to five, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:42

It's I I spent 20 years of programming, of programming myself in this entrepreneurial mindset that I had I had really cooked up on my own. And really when I look at my nine to five now, like it's there's a there's there's two there's two bubbles, right? There's my work life and my personal life. And when you're an entrepreneur, those lines get very blurred. Um, to the point where when I had made the thoughtful decision to, you know, leave my last job where I was an intrapreneur, I was a hired entrepreneur with equity in the company. It wasn't a I wasn't a founder, but I was very much an active owner of the company. But a uh decision to leave there and to come to this job was to really redefine those lines. I found myself as a 40-year-old with zero hobbies except drinking and worrying about and worrying about my my entrepreneurial ventures. So what and and that was consuming, and that was consuming all my time to now where um I have this time to think and I have hobbies and I get to really enjoy uh the things that I love, like my lawn doesn't have a dandelion in it, like things like that, right? I never got to do when I was an entrepreneur. And uh it's it's something now that I think when you look at the balance and what it requires. Maybe I was a bad entrepreneur because I didn't give myself that rest and that that thing that, as you so put it, that you know, humans need to have fun and and and that sort of stuff. And I was maybe robbing myself of a bit of that because of this idea of entrepreneurship that I had created.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Oh, I think you're really onto something there because there definitely is, right? Like we, you know, this part of the book I'm writing around like the yardsticks that we use to measure success and happiness. When you kind of, you know, it becomes like this perfect storm of unhappiness and misery when you combine like people who are not inclined to ask for help, do things on their own, you know, these like really, I think, rigid notions of what it looks like to be a successful entrepreneur that are coming from outside. And, you know, we're we're and we, I mean, it's natural, we all look for people who are a gap for us. I think so. But when we look to other people, um, you know, it's like there's this way to be an entrepreneur. And then we really like I can't speak for other parts of the world, but in North America, we really like success is achievement here, right? You are successful if you achieve the minute you stop achieving, and this is back to that model of what it looks like to be a successful tech startup, you get your first hundred grand and then your next million, and then you know, and we've all heard that story of you know, the person who created X product or X service or X website or you know, app, and then they sold it and they made $10 million, and that's the dream, right? But it's like if like if success equals achievement and I stop achieving, and so much of our self-worth is tied up in being successful. If we're not successful, we're not worthy. So then like it's just like um it really it fuels us to it. The drive comes from a not a very good place. So I'm not surprised that your hobby was drinking.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, it's funny. And you you so I work with uh with a a guy, um, and he'd been working in the kind of been supported by regional innovation centers around Ontario through a couple years of his career, and he developed some really cool, um, really cool solutions that were just good for the community, things that would help elderly people tap into volunteers to get groceries delivered during a pandemic, like just like really cool um grassroots, doing it for the right reasons, initiatives. And a lot of the community or the ecosystem or this the support ecosystem that we have in place when I showed up and started working with this fellow, um, were saying we got to productize this, we got to get him some investment. He needs it to start building a team, and he's got it like this is it. Like, here's how you scale this thing. Let's go. Let's let's this is what you need. This is what you need to be successful. And I could tell in in just his his body language that something wasn't right and something wasn't feeling right. And it wasn't until maybe like our second meeting when I finally said, like, what do you what do you what's your goal? Like, what's your entrepreneurial goal? Does this look like what you want? And it came out that he didn't. And and really what he wanted was uh he wanted to create something that could just a lifestyle business. So it's the end of the day. And and and and we've created such a bad stigma as the high tech, as the you know, whether it's the innovation industry or whoever it is, we've created such a bad stigma around this idea of lifestyle businesses. But lifestyle businesses are amazing and they can create um tremendous amount of wealth and value for their shareholders, their teams, their founders, uh, and anyone in their orbit. And I believe you know, and it's not always about the the monetary growth of margins, and it could be just about the you know, earning more money so that we can get better benefits for everyone. You know what I mean? It's it allows you to make those sorts of decision making in your in your core values that aren't encumbered by um maybe people that you don't want to be participating in your business, which is usually so that's something that I find that why aren't we asking people what their goals are and and maybe trying to support them a little more based on. They're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah, totally. Well, I started developing a training program earlier in COVID and I kind of put it on hold, and I might, you know, pick it up again at some point in time. I'm not sure, called Starting Your Startup. And like literally the first step in the process, right? It was like a seven-module post, like seven-step process was like discovery. Do you actually want to be an entrepreneur? What is your goal? And because perhaps being an entrepreneur is not like back inside of a thousand ways to get to New York. Maybe being an entrepreneur is not the best way to fulfill upon your goal. And I think there's lots of people who become disenfranchised with like nine to five, with corporate, with you know, and they they want something else. But there's like there's so many different ways to fulfill upon it. Even if, like, say your goal is like, you know, like I'm a coach, so I have a lot of coaches in my socials where like you just attract people who are kind of like you to you, which is amazing because they're incredible. But it's like, you know, talking to a young man who's in my life and he wants to coach young people. And I'm like, well, why don't you, you know, and he's feels like he up until this point, the best way to do that is to create his own coaching business. I'm like, perhaps, but why don't you start from like, what are all of the different ways I could fulfill on mentoring and coaching young people? And then see which one really lights you up. And like, is it working for a company like Boys and Girls Club? Is it like, I don't know, like, there's so many different ways to fulfill on our goals. And this is like, you know, such brilliance. One of the gentlemen I I interviewed for the podcast a few weeks back, Chris, said, um it's a mis in his experience of his life, he used to think that if you like serve and contribute, the pleasure will come later. It'll be like some cosmic reward. The pleasure will be some cosmic reward for all of the pain and the energy of being of service and contributing to others. And he said, it doesn't work that way. I'm sorry to let you know. Like you have to make the journey pleasurable too. If you're not actively choosing your pleasure and your desire and things that make you happy, then it's not gonna come 40, 50 years down the line when you're spent your whole life in you know, in service to others. And I think that's a really important point.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

Like, yeah, absolutely. Like separating what you're good at versus what makes you happy is extremely important because and going back to the organization I was with before I came here, part of the part of my um, I believe my journey as an entrepreneur has gone from the business development side to the actual people side, the culture side. I'm really in tune with that. When I when I look around our team meetings at Tech Alliance, I'm looking for if people are are having fun with what we're doing. It's it's about how the work feels, it's not about the budget anymore. And that's a really good thing about my position because it's not sales. At my previous position, I had said you guys should be allowed, you guys should be putting me somewhere where I'm focused on that, on the people, on the team, on the culture, on the operations, on the process. Um albeit I'm a really good salesman. And and that's something, you know, I had just kind of found myself as you know, in my late 30s, feeling like a professional wallet opener. I had done that my whole life at enterprise level, like closed the big door.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

I love that. A professional wallet opener.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Right? It wasn't, and as I became an executive, it just didn't feel like the executive that I wanted to be. So it was a real mindful decision, too. Like, okay, I understand that I'm good at it, but is it something that makes me happy? And going back to somebody that had to really stare anxiety in the face and think about the things that caused me anxiety, um, you know, losing big deals, meeting budget deadlines, uh um, all those sorts of things contributed a lot to it where I feel, you know, more I feel uh in more control of qualitative things like happiness and culture. And I know they're harder things to quant quantify, but that's that's somewhere where I think I can have just as much impact on the bottom line of any business so that I participate in moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Yeah. I think this is why it's so important for me that people get that they can create their own measures for happiness and success. I was having this like, I stopped by and visited a friend the other week, and and uh I've known this woman for most of my life. She's like, uh, we've danced in life together. She was 17 years older than me. I used to babysit her boys when I was young, and we became friends, and and she's just extraordinary. And she's taught me so much about the most important things for me in life. And she made a comment to me. She says, you know, Amber, on all accounts, you know, I've probably lived a meaty mediocre life, and I still think you could you growing is important. And I was just, I stopped and I said, Well, I guess, you know, depending on what you measure success based on, perhaps you've had a mediocre life. I said, but based on all of the things that are important to me, you're a miracle. Like you taught me to love music and all kinds of music. You taught me to love being outdoors and being in nature. You taught me to like value relationship and be in discovery about relationship. You know, I don't really care about, you know, how big your retirement savings plan is, or you know, the kinds of and she's done, I mean, like, not to sell this woman short, she's been working in community service and community development for decades, building relationships between families with special needs and partners in the community. She's done amazing work, but this is what we do to ourselves, right? It's like success looks like this, being extraordinary looks like this. And then anything that's short of that, um, why does it have to be a multi-million dollar, multi-billion dollar company? What like, what do you want your business as an entrepreneur to look like? Maybe you're happy earning, you know, $100,000 a year, $50,000, $70,000 a year, and you're really making a profound difference with like a community of people, you know, whatever it looks like. I think um I think it's as important to help people define the goals of being an entrepreneur and what they're out or just their goals in life, and then everything flows from there.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Absolutely. It's funny because you think about all the things that you learn throughout school. And I I I've like, I'm like, where have I ever applied the things that I actually learned in college that I paid to, you know what I mean? I think back like, have I ever used this stuff? And you know, sure, it was a lot of learning. I think the experience was most of the learning of going to school. Um, but I I think like there's there's five things that always remain true that you can kind of go back to. And I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs is still pretty kind of fundamental when it comes to self-actualization. What is it? What is your legacy? What is it that you want to impart on the world after you're gone? And is it gonna be, is it gonna be a it's fine if it's a trust fund or a great sum of value that you leave behind? That's cool. Um, but it's not for everyone, it shouldn't have to be for everyone. It shouldn't like it can be just like the wisdom that you've imparted on others, the the you know, the emails that I'm sure you get sometimes that just say, Hey, I was really stuck, and you really helped me remove that barrier. And it could be that's what fills you up and that's what actualizes yourself, and we're all wired differently, and it'll be those different things for each person. So I very much agree with you, Amber, when you say it's not it's not capitalism's picture of success, it doesn't have to be, right? That it's a accumulation of things, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Well, yeah, yeah, it's so funny because I think Adam Smith would probably roll over in his grave if he knew what we did with his theories of capitalism, just like Marx would roll over in his grave if he knew what human beings did with his theories of communism and you know political structures. So you I think it's interesting because anytime we look for like something outside of ourselves to tell us what our life should look like, and and you know, I think that's where we kind of run into a little bit of trouble. It's like what what does it look like for me in my life, in my family, in my network of conversations? You know, that what do I want versus like what is it that I should want or I'm supposed to want? Or I think, you know, what's my path forward in life? Um, how do I want to get to New York? Yeah, I get there's a thousand ways to get to New York. How do I want to get to New York? Do I want to get to New York on the back of a motorcycle, driving the motorcycle? Do I want to be on a bus? Do I want to walk there? Which way do I want to walk?

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Um, yeah. I'll tell you, Amber, that I'm I'm earning less. I'm earning less than I was a year ago today. Um, I'm probably a little feeling a little busier on the day-to-day basis. Um, but I've never been so invigorated about the work that I'm actually doing. Um, I don't think in my life. So, and that's really exciting for me. And that's like I earn enough money. I'm not, you know what I mean? Like I'm happy, I'm content, I'm I'm sustained. I'm sustained, but I'm really, really getting a lot of value out of the work that I'm doing personally. And that's really, really important to me. And that's a place that I I don't know if I've ever been able to say that comfortably as commiserate to the amount of money I'm making. Because at a startup, you can say that I really love the work I'm doing, but I'm not making anything. So you know what I mean? Like it's never been, it's never been those two things together, which make it a lot of fun for me right now. And it's totally, um, it's totally well, it it is, I think, and go to those things of what's it gonna be? Like to me, if I wake up every morning and say, you know, how are we gonna make entrepreneurship more accessible today? And if I can just produce against that goal, and it's not necessarily a list of things that I have to accomplish, but it's an overall movement towards an ideal. Um, and each step that we take and each day that we move towards that, maybe it comes into focus a little bit more about what that looks like, um, that destination, or maybe New York City, the Empire State Buildings coming into focus a little bit more and more. But um, you know, it feels like feels, yeah, it's it's kind of a foggy path, but I don't know where it goes, but it feels like where I feel like it's the exact path I should be on right now in this very moment at this very time. Like it's exciting to me.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

That's awesome. So talk to me a little bit more, talk to us a little bit more about what Tech Alliance does. Like, how do you support entrepreneurs? What why would people reach out? Yep. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

So, yeah, we're a regional innovation center. There's 17 regional innovation centers in Canada. We're funded in part by the provincial government and and several of the municipal governments of where we work. Um effectively, I like to say that, you know, so Communitech Mars Discovery District make up one of the biggest, if not the biggest, uh innovation hub on the planet or innovation corridor on the planet. And then we have a bunch of other regional innovation centers in kind of that orbit. Um, so Tech Alliance, we'd be, I think, probably the fourth, we're the largest geographic catchment in Ontario, but probably I think the fourth largest in terms of population after community or Mars, Invest Ottawa, and Communitech. Really easy, and uh uh forgive me to use the sports analogy, we're London, Sarnia, Woodstock, and St. Thomas minor entrepreneurship. We exist to grow the game and support the game, anyone who wants to play in our community. So, how do we support folks with that? Um, we do it by one-to-many experiences. So, one-to-many experiences are going to be like um, you know, our our impact series of fireside chats and master classes with entrepreneurs. We we partner with Ivy Business School to deliver uh entrepreneur 1.0 courses for young entrepreneurs. Um, then we do kind of the one-to-one experiences, which is me and my team. So, you know, one-to-many experiences are really designed for ideation, for kind of that general knowledge, support, the investigation of entrepreneurship as a career, you know, what's happening. Maybe there's certain things as a startup you can gain from that, but it's when you actually have a company and you're starting to talk about business models and even kind of go-to-market strategies that you enter into these one-to-one experiences. One-to-one is basically, you know, me and my startup advisors, then we have a layer of um subject matter experts. So we have growth coaches and EIRs, and and Tech Alliance probably has one of the most extensive and probably enviable networks of EIRs in the province. So we connect entrepreneurs who are having problems with subject matter expertise, whether it be advanced manufacturing, sports and lifestyle, ag tech, clean tech, um, you know, mergers and acquisitions, funding your startup, DCs, angels, all those sorts of people to help you get connected either to the industries, to the other people you need, or just get you to that next point of your of your entrepreneurial career. I told you my story about Major League Baseball and what we did back in 2010. I very much see my team as venture scouts. Um, so we partner with the rest of the ecosystem. So the regional innovation center, I really see as the nucleus of the of the kind of ecosystem. We partner with everyone else. So Ontario Centers of Innovation, you know, National Research Council, Innovation Canada, venture capital firms, angel firms, and me and my scouting team, we find high potential businesses and we get them to the next point of their career, whatever that is. So just kind of like baseball scouting. We're the guys out at the high school field with the clipboards looking for high potential um companies and economic drivers coming through our provincial pipelines. We then match them based on their goals. Based on their goals, we would then match them with whoever we feel then can help them either further commercialize, scale, grow, um, or take this business to the next level.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Maybe what do you mean there's like partners out there and people you can collaborate with to get support as an entrepreneur to grow your business? What are you talking about? No, it ain't so.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Yes, it does feel like it is um very lonesome. The one thing about regional innovation centers, and this is part of the stigma, you know, as somebody who was an income tax consultant for many years, um now I'm kind of, and then I was an entrepreneur, and you know, you go through these moments of like, ah, the government, and you shake your fist and damn government, they always screw everything up. But when I look at the role of a regional innovation center, now even working for one and having been the customer of one with these long clinical surveys, um, it really makes a lot of sense. Like, how else are we going to influence the government support into entrepreneurship unless we're providing them data? So, you as an entrepreneur get to access the services of a regional innovation center at no cost. So, you know, my salary is subsidized. So the hours that I spend with with clients are, you know, direct hours, and we track those hours back to the government to say, here's how we're impacting on and we're touching entrepreneurs. Here's the entrepreneurs we're touching, and here's how they're progressing. So if the government doesn't understand that, then that doesn't influence the funding that we receive and the programs that we create. So a lot of companies, you know, maybe get to a certain stage and they feel like they outgrow the regional innovation center for for um whatever reason it is that maybe they deem that you know they've outgrown the services. That could very well be so, depending on the regional innovation center. But a lot of the times it's this disconnection of they feel like we should no longer be reporting to the government. Whether that's the influence of an outside investor that says, no, no, no, you don't send those numbers to the government, or like, but it's really nothing that wouldn't be reported on your on your corporate T1 anyway. So there is this kind of, you know, a part of my goal to kind of make it more accessible and make it more understandable is to really build this bridge at like, or or maybe lower this, not lower, maybe kind of, I don't know, there's this this adversarial relationship between startups and and and our provincial government. And I just I don't think it should be. Like I think by way of the regional innovation center, this should be a very complementary uh relationship. And if we don't understand the scale, and you know, here's an example. You know, we we work with hundreds of clients a year. And so in London, St. Thomas, St. Thomas, Sarnia, and Woodstock. So let's say we work with 500 clients a year. I find it very hard to believe that there's only 500 really good innovative ideas in that large a geographic region at any given time. Um I very hardly hear from rural regions um within our within our catchment, um BIPOC communities within our catchment. It's we um women-led inventors in our catchment. Um, entrepreneurship is still a very white and very male. Um high-tech entrepreneurship is still very white and very male. And I believe, again, entrepreneurship needs to be more um accessible. And I believe that there are thousands of ID-ating businesses at the grassroots level in our community, in my catchment. And I and if we're only capturing hundreds, then I believe we need to open the funnel and figure out how to make it more accessible to capture more.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Well, if you are an entrepreneur listening to this podcast, I seriously suggest, you know, there'll be opportunities you'll you'll be able to connect with John. Uh, John is extraordinary, and the team and the work that they do. And and and I think this is the we don't have to go it alone. And in fact, it's like far more fun. It's you know, it's far more fun when you do it in partnership with other people. This is something that I'm learning. It takes less time. You're more effective working in team and and and being collaborating with other people. And I think that that that whole idea that we have to do it alone, or it should look, you know, whatever it is, it's got to look a certain way. Being an entrepreneur looks a certain way. And and perhaps partnering with your regional innovation center is not the way it's supposed to look, but it's like, well, who said who said that? You know, and and why would you deprive yourself of the opportunity to get a hand up and get some support on your journey so that, you know, because I think as much as oftentimes the conversation kind of becomes about money, people become entrepreneurs because they want to make a difference for other people and they want to be of service. And there's some problem that they see needs to get solved, or some solution idea that they have that think, you know, other people will benefit from. So why not avail yourself of all of the different opportunities out there to have make that impact bigger? And you know, it doesn't have to be bigger, but like make the impact whatever you want it to be in as you know, as quick a time as possible, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:17

I think going it alone, I believe, is is still a very deficit mindset. And I think that I think that all too often I'm still meeting entrepreneurs who just have an idea, and the very first interaction I'm having with them is them asking me to sign an IDA, an NDA, because their idea is so good and they can't talk about it. And I'm like, you're you're starting on the absolute wrong place because ideas are a dime a dozen. And and and if you, you know, I I know the conversations always always end up in money and they're kind of centered around money, but if we really translate the the conversation of money to early stage startups and people who feel like they're going it alone, it's all about risk. And it behooves me as the very first person to think of this idea and want to move it to one the next the next logical step, it's all about distributing that risk. So, right now, if it's just me and I'm the only person I'm accepting 100% of the risk. If I talk to you, Amber, and I tell you my idea and you say, Holy shit, John, let's work on that together. Would you take me on as a partner? And I say, Absolutely. Well, now I've distributed the risk. So, for first of all, wow, I made my first sale.

unknown 42:28

Whew.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

Amber's on board. I'm feeling a lot better. Now we've distributed risk. Somebody from the outside is saying, Holy shit, look at John, he's building a team. So now we're like, that's the whole idea of like of doing a startup. It's distributing the risk. Oh, now we got a developer to join our triad. Now it's a triad, and we're all sharing the risk, and now we're all investing our time and our sweat equity into this. And other people are going, holy shit, John got a developer. That's and we haven't done anything other than share an idea and and rally people around an idea to make other people's lives better by way of our idea that solves their problem, eases their pain, makes it better, faster, cheaper for them.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

So great. And it very much is that like that scarcity mindset and and like one of my like, not gonna lie, I get on a little rant about it, a pet peeve, like this, like we've monetized thought. And then now you have all of these people, and and I'm gonna sound real self-righteous here, people, and I get that, and I'm okay with it right now. Like, it's always been giants standing on the shoulders of giants. Like, if people were really honest, I cannot sit here. I may have some really good ideas, and I do, and I have some great ideas about how I'm gonna make a difference in the world, but it is like really irresponsible of me not to like acknowledge the source by which all of those ideas came to me from. The philosophies I studied in university, the personal development courses and training I Done. All of the people in my life that I share their thoughts with me, they all merge together and come together. But because we've monetized thoughts, now all of a sudden it's like, oh, we, you know, that it's my IP, it's my idea. I came up with it. It's like, well, yeah, you may have come up with this version of it. And I'm not sitting here saying that people can't ever have an original thought or, but it's we're we're we are the total the coming together of all of these experiences and influences, and not just from within our our um like our business world or professional worlds, but music influences, lyrics from songs, you know, stories that we heard, movies that we watched. Like you can't separate yourself out from all of those things. So I think it's very um like not just for the reasons that you said, like you, you know, you're not distributing the risk and you know, you're making your life that much harder, but it's just a fallacy, I think. And I'm just gonna go out and say it's a fallacy to sit here and say that like I've got this thought and and that is just uniquely mine, and I'm not gonna share it with other people. Like, I I just I agree with you, it's the wrong foot to try to leap off of.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Yeah, and think about like entrepreneurs as a career, I don't know, I know my high-tech entrepreneurship stats, and which are really it's north and 90% failure rates. And I I kind of think about like how we're interacting right now, and what we're talking about is lived experience, which may be translated into best practice, may resonate with somebody, could be best practice, could be something, but could you imagine doctors with a north of 90% fail rate? Could you imagine if they had never shared best practices on how to remove an appendix or whatever? Like it seems fucking crazy to me. Sorry for swearing that. It's just like this it there's no there's there's not no established standard of kind of what we're doing, and not even from the government, of which kind of I'm funded by and represent. So if it's anything, like, is there uh like what is that starting point? And this is, I think, go if we go back to 55 minutes, where is that starting point? Like, where does the entrepreneur take that first step? And I still don't think we have an answer.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

And and you know, it's so great. Like, I think about my time in aviation, and this is one of the things that I've observed about the aviation industry. Have you ever noticed when a plane crashes, like with the exception of like in some some movies where you know we're not trying to find the black box, like they go to countries, no expenses spared, countries work together, everyone only cares about one thing finding the freaking black box. Yeah that's and and they don't care about how much money they have to spend because they are how bent that they are gonna get to the root cause and the source of that failure. Yeah, and and it's about the souls lost, and it's about the money, and it's about the reputation of the industry, but it's a joint venture. It's like a whole bunch of people coming together saying, We're gonna make this happen. We don't care if we have to dredge the ocean, scale into the mountains. We're finding that black box so we can find out what happened here, so we can do whatever we have to to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And I and I I agree with you 100%. I think we don't like from my project management experience, like lessons learned and the and like the willingness to share authentically about man, like I fell on my fake face and I'm falling on my face because so often entrepreneurs share. Like, I was listening to this like uh talk by Vish Vision from Mind Valley about his journey to becoming to creating Mind Valley, and we share the the victories over the past after the fact when we're a success, but where is that camaraderie when we're in the trenches and we're like, oh my god, I am living month to month and I don't know how I'm gonna pay my rent next month, and like sharing that and like sharing the honest truth of what it's like day in and day out to be an entrepreneur, carrying the weight of a family on your shoulders, and you know, you're taking this risk with, you know, I left this corporate job and now I've got to support this family, and and I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I think if we dispel all of the romantic notions of what it is to be an entrepreneur and just like shared with one another, and we're willing to say, like, I need help, like I have this great idea, but I really need help getting figuring this out because I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

Yeah, I think all the times I went to lunch with other founders, and then like this is probably universal across the planet. Startup founders going for lunch, talking about how fucking awesome things are, and then the bill comes, and then there's like that that second of like so. Then you grab the bill, you're the first one to grab it, and you're like you're the other in the other founder's mind, they're just going, Oh, thank god. Thank god, and then in your mind, you're like, I'm so hope I have room on the credit card as you hand it over because you've just spent an hour talking about how awesome things are, like when you could have spent an hour commiserating on how you don't have money and figuring it out. Like, you know what I mean? Like, oh, it's so true. It's so true. Wasted hour. That's two wasted hours of of facade.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

Yeah, it's all of this looking good, right? So if we could give up the looking good. So, this is the invitation, everyone listening. My invitation is to give up whatever looking good you got going on, or fear of looking bad, or fear of like I may look like I don't have my stuff together. You know, wherever you're at in your journey of being an entrepreneur, you know, or whether you're even curious about what could be, you know, is this a path for me? Avail yourself of these extraordinary resources at Tech Alliance, get in communication with John. He's got your back. He literally, like he said it here today. You heard him, I get out of bed in the morning to support entrepreneurs and being able to achieve the things that are important to them. Uh, John, I'm just so grateful that I met you and to have this conversation this morning. And I look forward to um just continuing to engage and create with you and just thank you. Thank you for you do for my fellow entrepreneurs out there and and uh and the ripple effect of that, right? Because we don't often know, but like every life you touch and every entrepreneur you help, there's like family members and community members and their clients and their customers, like you and your team really, I just really want to acknowledge you for the for the massive impact that you do have.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

And and I to you, Amber. You're doing this is awesome. I had a blast today, and you know, doing a lot of the same things, you're just figuring it out on your own, where you know, I didn't have the tolerance for it anymore. So I I certainly appreciate it. And any way I can support you, um, just let me know.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

Thank you so much, everyone. Have a great week, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For show info, visit what wouldamberdo.com. And for information about Amber Howard and Associates' offerings and services, visit amberhowdenc.com.